Haunt
by Auchen
Summary: (All human AU.) Jane works for a company setting up colonies on Mars, and is only able to visit Earth a few months of the year. Loki anticipates those weeks hungrily.


**A/N: **This was written for a ficlet meme on tumblr in which the prompt was: "pankolicious16 said: Lokane "can I kiss you?" Extra challenge: angst OR fluff, no between." This fic was also inspired by the Ray Bradbury short story "The Rocket Man".

* * *

><p>She comes home for a few months a year like a ghost come from the stars. It's always night time when her shuttle settles own a few miles away and she exits from its dark gaping maw.<p>

But when she comes it's always the same, like an old recording he can't stop watching. He first hears the key jabbed into the lock of the door, and it scrapes back and forth across the tumblers for a moment. The lock always stuck and he always told her with a half-smile he'd fix it. (But he won't, because changing even one small part of the routine might somehow cause her to never come back.)

Then the door creaks open and her soft boots thump up the landing and then creak up over the stairs. And finally her long shadow falls across him in the bedroom and she leans over him.

"You're awake," she'll say.

"Of course I am. You know me better than to think I would change my insomniac habits." And then they kiss.

—

When Loki married her, he knew that he would never be the first love in Jane's life. Her heart always belonged first to those distant balls of fire and gas and planets propelling themselves through the void. But he hoped that perhaps she would learn to love him almost as much as those things.

But maybe he held on too tightly to her at the beginning, selfish and arrogant, refusing to see that she did not want to be stuck on Earth. There were a lot of heated words, then. And then a week later she left on her shuttle longer than she ever had before.

—

They never talk about where she's been at first. They always begin as they left off, like their lives were a film that could be paused and then resumed with no consequences. This morning they sit down to breakfast, Loki's face blue from the glaring screen of the laptop as he types away, checking his company's finances.

Jane perches on the edge of her chair, blowing on her coffee before taking a small sip. "I'm sure your stocks can wait," she says, eyes smiling over her mug.

"Stocks can never wait, you know. They're wily animals." He raises his eyes and gazes at her above the black line of his laptop.

She walks over to him and pushes down the lid an inch so that her dark eyes are staring into his own. He almost flinches at how they look into him, as if she were reading his mind. Loki never got used to the way that Jane liked to pry under the edges of his caustic armor and find the version of himself he didn't want most people to see. (Especially those that were close to him.)

"I think they can," she says, teasing tone suddenly gone.

They won't speak of where she's been; they never do on the first day. But it runs beneath the currents of their words. "Well then, what do you propose we do?" he asked, closing his laptop.

"Anything. The whole world is open to us, isn't it?"

"Well, I do have a meeting this afternoon, but that could of course be canceled. They wouldn't argue with me." His mind wanders to his new car, a convertible, red and sleek like a vicious cat. He bought it thinking how all the world would notice Jane in the passenger seat, and he with dark sunglasses on. _There go the king and queen_, they would think.

"I have an idea," he says, and he takes her hand.

—

There is no possible way that they are obeying the speed limit. The wind screams along behind them and Jane puts a hand to her head, trying to keep her hair from flying into her face.

"Tell me again why I agreed to take a ride in this thing?" she yells over the rush of air.

"Because you wished to be seen by everyone? Or perhaps because you are willing to agree to your loving husband's every request because of his honey-like voice?" Loki calls back.

"I don't think it's either of those reasons. I think it's because I forgot the time I rode in Darcy's boyfriend's car then threw up afterwards."

Loki gasps in mock disgust. "Don't say things like that. Don't you dare ruin the leather."

Jane punches his arm, and he makes the car swerve a bit on purpose. He flashes a wide, white grin at her, as bright as a crescent moon.

"Ah, ah, be careful Jane. You wouldn't cause the designated driver to wreck us, would you?" He takes a hand off the steering wheel and waves a finger at her. She swats it away.

"Of course not. I would feel bad for whoever would have to clean up your brains afterwards. They wouldn't be worthy to touch your highly intellectual gray matter," Jane says.

"You always know how to say the nicest things to a man, my dear."

After that, they say nothing else. They continue blazing along the streets like a comet made of metal and chrome, a falling star asking all who see them to dare wish that they could be as lucky as Jane and Loki are.

They rumble on toward the horizon, but the wind still blows between them, an icy knife that makes him shiver.

—

The next day he takes her to a fancy restaurant. Jane protested, making her arms go limp so that he had to all but drag her to the car. The food is excellent and would make most people quell in fear at the luxurious price tag attached to the various dishes with foreign names. But there's nothing good enough for Jane. No amount is too much to be spent on these few moments.

Loki pushes a lobster dish towards her. She makes a face. "I've never liked lobster. I don't like how they still have their claws, it seems like they might pinch you."

"Whatever are we going to do with you? I'm afraid disliking lobster might be grounds for divorce."

At that, Jane frowns a bit. In that moment, Loki knew he shouldn't have said anything like that. Mentioning the fact that they were all but unmarried for a few months of the year didn't help matters.

"Well, at least the wine is good," Jane says, but there is no conviction to her voice.

"Indeed," Loki says. And he takes a sip to agree with her, but it is sour on his lips and a rock in his stomach.

—

They say nothing the next day about how the date to the restaurant didn't go well. They don't see each other much anyway. Loki has several mandatory meetings that he can't miss, and though he apologizes and Jane says that it's fine, he can't help but want to snarl at the way her eyes are beginning to drift back to the blue sky.

During the meetings he is snappish—more than he is than usual anyway—and hurries through reports and accounts in a way that leave his employees and investors scratching their heads in confusion at the numbers he throws out.

When he comes home, Jane is sitting on the porch, head lowered as she reads a book. Loki holds his breath and releases it when he sees that it is not an astronomy book.

When Jane spots him coming up the drive way, she waves, and the sunlight brushes her face like gentle fingers waiting to snatch her away again.

—

They can't avoid talking about it for long. So two weeks after she comes home, two weeks after pretending that they are a happily married high powered business couple, the subject is breached. It's a morning like all the others, he hunched over a laptop, she blowing on her coffee.

"The Mars colonies are doing well," is all she says.

"Oh, are they?" Loki pecks at the keys, hoping that if he does not encourage this line of conversation then it will be dropped.

"Yes, especially the main one. You should see the green houses they've been building, and the houses. Just imagine it, one day they will rival the colonies on the moon."

And despite his better judgment, Loki looks into her eyes and is scared of what he sees there. Her eyes are so alive, dancing in the way that nothing else makes them shine.

"Perhaps I will move there one day. I'm sure businessmen of my caliber are in high demand up there. Maybe they want something other than red rocks to make the landscape less monotonous," Loki says, trying to keep his tone playful, but as it passes his lips, the words become sharp and biting.

And then the shutters to Jane's eyes are snapped closed. "Yes, maybe one day. But Mars is likely too good for your sainted foot to touch."

Loki closes his laptop and begins to rise. "Jane, I didn't—"

She holds up a hand. "I know. It's just how you are. I guess I just forgot."

And with that she leaves. And he feels as if he is standing in the cold vacuum of space, drifting away with nothing to keep him anchored.

—

They don't speak of it the next day. The next day he takes the afternoon off, and she refuses to be taken somewhere fancy. She does not want to be spotted by everyone in town, have everyone say, Look, Mrs. Laufeyson is home. How can she leave her husband all the time?

And Loki agrees, so they drive to a hole in the wall cafe.

They food is bad. The French toast is overcooked and the orange juice has too much pulp in it, the music buzzes over half-broken speakers, and someone's child is whining in a booth in the back.

Though Loki dislikes the place itself, dislikes how mediocre and obviously classless it is, he cannot think of a way he would rather spend the afternoon. Because Jane is happy, smiling as she picks up a limp piece of salad and holds it up to her face, pretending that she has a green mustache.

"Where has my wife gone? I fear she's been replaced by an effeminate man with a mustache that strangely looks like expired lettuce," Loki says, pressing a hand to his mouth, and frantically turning his head.

Jane laughs and knocks over her glass of orange juice. The pulp splatters on the floor, and the juice itself creates an off color sunburst on the ugly checkered tablecloth. As an employee of the cafe gives them a scathing glare, Jane picks up a napkin and begins to clean up the mess in between chuckles.

After that they drive to another part of town—a strip mall near a cheap theater—and sit in the car, covertly watching people that pass by.

"Oh dear, I think that young man badly wants to hold that girl's hand, but she's having none of it." Loki points at pair of teenagers passing by.

The girl nudges the boy away, and Jane gives a small cheer. She then points at a man with a violin case walking out of the rundown theater. "Obviously a gangster," she says.

"No, I think he's a Russian agent," Loki says. "His face looks very Slavic."

"You do know that the Cold War is over, right?" Jane looks over at him with a raised eyebrow.

"That's what the government wants you to believe. Do not fall for their lies."

And it goes on like that, Loki and Jane turning dog walkers into double agents, loitering teenagers into undercover government officials, populating an otherwise uninteresting street corner into a 1950's spy thriller. As they drive home in the darkness they fall quiet and Loki turns the radio on. Jane switches it off, and gives him a narrow glare. He doesn't dare argue with it.

As they drive down the gentle curve of the streets back to his castle of a house, the motor thrumming, he can't think of a time any better than this in recent memory.

—

The day has come.

It didn't come with pomp and circumstance, and they didn't even talk about it before they went to bed. They switched off the light without another word, imagining the next day would be like any other, but with the unspoken understanding that it wasn't.

Today Jane rises earlier than she has before, shuffling around in the darkness as Loki tries to pretend to be asleep, feeling the space in the bed next to him cool down. Eventually Jane switches the light on. "Have you seen my ID badge?" she asks.

Loki doesn't answer for a moment, because he's ashamed to. Several weeks ago, he found her ID badge in her drawer when he was searching for something when he was overcome by the desire to hide it. A desire which he acknowledged when he crammed it into his own dresser.

Even though deep down he knew it wouldn't keep her from leaving, some superstitious part of him thought that such a symbolic act could keep her tethered to the Earth.

But he doesn't say any of that. He just throws off his blankets and wanders to his dresser and pulls the ID out of the obscure corner he had hid her badge in. "You must have misplaced it," Loki says as he slips it into her palm.

She looks suspicious. She hasn't been married to him long enough not to think that something isn't a bit off, but she lets it slide. Perhaps because there's no reason to make today harder than it needs to be.

Loki and Jane go to the kitchen as they have every other morning, but with she dressed in her uniform, a tiny Mars colony logo stitched onto her left shoulder, declaring who she belongs to now.

She's going to have to leave in an hour, and he isn't go to see her off, because they both know if he goes with her, it will be like saying good-bye formally, and then they won't be able to resume their paused life when she returns in another few months.

For the moment, they're silent, letting their toast cool and harden on their plates. Loki clacks away at his laptop, trying to lose himself in a column of numbers. But there in the corner of the screen, the clock keeps ticking, and he wants to smash it because that might somehow stop time, might somehow keep her there with him permanently.

All too soon, Jane comes and leans over the laptop screen and pushes it down without his permission. They look into each other's eyes, drinking up the lines and planes of each other's faces like drowning sailors before either of them speaks.

"Can I kiss you?" Loki asks.

Jane just nods.

And when they kiss, they linger, memorizing the way their mouths curve, and the way that their cologne and perfume smells. In that moment, they are the only thing that matters. All too soon, Jane pulls away—she's always the first to pull away—but Loki still has a hand on her arm. He looks at her one last time.

And though he's there in the reflection of her eyes, he also sees the depths of space looking back at him, and the red, shifting sands of an alien shore.


End file.
